


why do I want nothing but to rest my soul?

by mysilenceknot



Series: 'cause I swore you had your hand in this too [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-02 23:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16314674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysilenceknot/pseuds/mysilenceknot
Summary: Iris closes her eyes, clenching her fists and taking several deep breaths. He’s asking for a fight, she realizes. That almost makes her angrier, makes her regret showing up in the first place when she had other places she could have moped at. Once she no longer feels like having her vines strangle him, Iris presses one hand onto his chest.“Can we not? Can we not fucking do this tonight?”Barry lets out a puffy exhale but covers her hand with his own.





	why do I want nothing but to rest my soul?

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't plan this fic within this universe so I'm sorry that it's sad westallen hours once more. at least we finally see Iris open up? includes mentions of Cisco/Iris.  
> Title comes from [Curl Up and Die](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZE5Ks2xM_E) by Relient K.

Barry doesn’t glance in her direction when he hears her land gracefully on the STAR Labs roof.   
  
“I don’t have energy for games tonight.”

“No games.” Iris walks casually to where he’s sitting. She notes that at least he’s showing some level of common sense – metahuman or not, sitting on the roof edge was asking for trouble at such a height. “Here,” she says, and Barry looks up to meet her eyes, studying her for a moment.   
  
“Ann,” he says, noting that she’s not in any sort of costume tonight. He takes the bottle of wine she offers.   
  
“Barry.” Shifting between her feet is the only sign of anything but smooth confidence that she’s willing to let him see. She debates her next move. On most nights when she’d find him, he was at least in a talkative mood. Wither had free reign: pushing his buttons, flirting with lust clear in her eyes, giving him what they both knew he needed. Their relationship was fun, no strings attached. No interest on her part for the deep personal conversations that she knew he yearned for.   
  
Tonight is different. Iris can feel how sad he is. She doesn’t want to make things worse.   
  
“May I sit?”   
  
Barry pops the cork and scoffs. “If I say no, will that actually mean anything to you?”   
  
“Yes.” He looks back up at her, disbelief coloring his face. Iris sighs. “Look, we both know I’m a massive bitch. But if you want to drink alone, so be it.”   
  
They stare at each other for several moments; at a lack of response Iris turns to leave.   
  
“Stay.” She stops. Iris turns around. Barry’s eyes are shining. “Please, stay.” With a nod of her head, Iris sits next to him on the roof.   
  
Barry doesn’t say anything so she follows his cue. The pair sit in silence, lost in their own thoughts. For a while Iris feels almost at peace. Stars shine bright from above, a cloudless night letting them smile on the city below. And it’s easy for them to smile since they have no responsibilities or failures or pain resting on the shoulders of space. Just burning balls of plasma keeping watch from afar.   
  
Wally had loved space.   
  
He’d loved most things scientific, to be fair, but Iris closes her eyes and remembers what it was like way back then. Her parents, both brilliantly alive, lay on the blankets to watch the night with their children. Wally was still in elementary school in this memory. He talked excitedly about what he’d been learning about in class, pointing out constellations and reciting facts he’d memorized from library books.   
  
Iris notices Orion’s Belt. The silence is suffocating.   
  
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says. Anything to make him engage with her.”   
  
“You know,” he responds casually, “alcohol doesn’t actually work on me. Not since the metagene was activated. Sometimes all I wanna do is blackout and forget it, forget everything that’s happening and has happened.” His laugh is bitter. “Instead it’s just constant reminders of being abnormal, abnormal and unable to succeed at the one thing I’m good at.”   
  
“Barry, it wasn’t your fault the firefighter died. You both did your jobs and there’s no way you would have known the upper floor was going to collapse the way it did.”   
  
“A nice thought,” he says, taking another swig from the wine bottle. “But each life counts. Maybe you can’t understand that but each one weighs on me.”   
  
The way he phrases that thought pisses her off. Is he really implying…   
  
“Are you saying I don’t care if people die?”

“Don’t have to say it if it’s true.”   
  
Iris stands up. “You’re fucking kidding, right?” She can feel her eyes turning green without her trying.   
  
“I’m not the one who’s wanted for murder, Wither.”   
  
“I’m not Slade. I don’t get off on the choices I’m forced to make.”   
  
Barry stands up. “Oh right! Choices! Murder or not murder.” The laughter again, darker this time. He pushes himself into her space, looks down at her with fire in his eyes. “You’re not a goddamn deity.”   
  
Iris closes her eyes, clenching her fists and taking several deep breaths. He’s asking for a fight, she realizes. That almost makes her angrier, makes her regret showing up in the first place when she had other places she could have moped at. Once she no longer feels like having her vines strangle him, Iris presses one hand into his chest.   
  
“Can we not? Can we not fucking do this tonight?”   
  
Barry lets out a puffy exhale but covers her hand with his own.   
  
Honestly, she should leave. Fuck Barry, fuck the Red Streak, fuck everything and everyone that led to her first kill in the first place. She should leave but she feels antsy in a dangerous way. Cisco wouldn’t be back for another hour and she’d come out her to make her brain shut up in the first place.   
  
Obviously she failed.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Barry says, interrupting her spiraling thoughts. “Thank you for your condolences.” Iris nods her head in acknowledgement but doesn’t look up. What the hell is she doing? Why is this where she’d instantly turned to? So many options but she decided she wanted to hang out with the Red Streak. Pure foolishness.   
  
Barry holds her hand as he begins to sit back down, tugging her to follow.

“I wanted to be an astronaut,” Barry says. He lets go of her hand and lies down. “Did you ever see the movie October Sky?”

“We owned it. My brother made me watch it so many times that there was a point where I could have recited the film almost perfectly.”

“Relatable. My mom rented it from Blockbuster on a whim and eventually had to buy it because I never wanted her to return it. And that’s how I decided to become an astronaut.”   
  
“What changed?”   
  
“My father had a heart attack when I was in sixth grade,” Barry answers casually, no hint of emotion in his voice. “He was fine in the end but you can only imagine how stressful that was for a kid.”   
  
Iris thinks back to the first time her mother received a diagnosis. “Yeah, I can imagine.”   
  
“There was a night in the hospital when my parents were talking to his doctor. I looked out the window and stared at the almost full moon. In that moment I realized I didn’t want to be far away from the people I loved.”   
  
They stare at the sky together, silent once more.   
  
“Look,” Barry eventually says. Iris follows his finger to where he’s pointing. “That’s Gemini – the two brightest stars are Pollux and Castor. There’s Lyra, and there’s –”   
  
“Orion.” She interrupts. “Orion’s belt is the first cluster of stars I knew. My brother taught me that one.” Iris can’t help but smile.   
  
“Older or younger?”   


"Younger.” She still smiles even though the rush of pain that always leaks out when she talks about Wally makes itself known. Why she’s letting her guard down so much is something Iris doesn’t quite understand, but there’s something about the sky and the vibe between the two of them that makes her offer more information without Barry’s prompting. “He’s definitely the nerd of the family. Always using science and engineering to find out how the world works and how to help save it.”   
  
“Does he live here in Central City?”   
  
“Nah. He’s back in our hometown with our parents. I didn’t expect to be the one who made it out but here we are.” A slight alteration of the truth, but there’s no way Barry could know that. “I miss them a lot but I make sure to visit pretty often. How about you? Family?”   
  
“Only child with happily married parents. They know… about me, so it worked out in the end.”   
  
Iris hums. “That’s really the only thing people like us can hope for.” As Barry sits up she realizes that she might have said too much. Lucky for her, his chance was lost when her phone buzzes.   
  
Glancing at the text Cisco sent her, Iris stands up. “I have to go. But this was interesting.”   
  
Barry stands up as well and pulls her into a tight hug. All Iris wants to do is melt into this hug but her brain has become hyper alert of reality once Cisco broke through the bubble around him and Barry. She reflexively stiffens up.   
  
“I won’t tell anyone you had a nice time with me,” he whispers into her ear.   
  
It’d been such a long time since she’d been hugged like this. With Cisco it was different, of course. They were partners and their love for each other was something that came at a time when they were both broken, both wandering in a world where they no longer had any family to turn to. The line between friends and lovers and family faded away. At the end of the day, they would always have each other and she could feel that when they hugged or kissed or fucked.   
  
This hug from Barry was a hug of gratitude, a hug given from a place of genuine emotion for her and for who he was discovering her to be.   
  
Eventually he realizes that his hug is not being reciprocated. He rubs the back of his head sheepishly after letting her go; Iris can’t help but lean up and kiss him on the cheek.   
  
“Don’t think for a second that you’ll see me like this again, Streak.” Iris smiles and walks backwards towards a lip of the roof.   
  
“Vulnerability looks beautiful on you, Wither.” With a roll of her eyes, she lets a vine that had been helping construct a net below for her to land on. It smacks Barry in the forehead.   
  
“We both know that I have hotter looks than this.” The vine returns and waves goodbye at Barry in tandem with her hand. “Catch you later.”   
  
“Not unless I catch you first.”   
  
Iris lets out a rich laugh. “In your dreams.”   
  
She steps off the ledge to fall into the canopy below.


End file.
